April's Rise, April's Fall
by Lucillia
Summary: In one timeline, Robert April becomes the first captain of the Starship Enterprise. In another, he loses everything and spirals towards his destruction. All it takes to change everything is the destruction of a single starship.
1. How Did It Change So Much?

Ambassador Spock explored the almost sterile looking expanse of the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. The predominant color of the bridge was white, but it was broken with an occasional bit of chrome or blue. The monitors and workstations that were scattered across the bridge which provided colors beyond chrome, blue, and the almost omnipresent white were very bright - almost overly cheery looking - and almost every panel that controlled the ship's systems was a touchscreen despite the risks of a finger slipping and hitting the wrong control button at precisely the wrong moment in the middle of a crisis.

Commander Spock had allowed him aboard for a tour of the ship before the new captain arrived, the new captain who called to mind the phrase "Here comes the new boss, just the same as the old boss", seeing as the man in question was the counterpart to the longest serving captain of the Enterprise. When he had been given this opportunity, he had expected his visit to the ship to be like a reunion with an old friend, but it was like meeting a vaguely familiar stranger with the same name instead.

This wasn't his Enterprise.

His Enterprise had been different, darker, and - though he would never say it aloud - cozier. The lines of her hull had been rounder in places, and her corridors rectangular rather than rounded at the corners. When it came to the interior - rather than being a vast expanse of cream colored walls in every direction - there had been color everywhere to break up the monotony of seemingly endless corridors that were flanked by bland labs, cabins, and storage spaces amongst other things. Aboard his Enterprise, they had still used archaic paper printouts and obsessively backed everything up on Harddisk to prevent errors, and if necessary have a solid record of data entry that one could use to backtrack through in search of possible errors to be corrected should something go wrong. The system controls had all been switches and buttons and knobs in order to reduce errors that could be caused by sweaty fingers sliding across a screen during a critical moment in the midst of a battle or other such crisis, and to provide tactile feedback that would cause one to recognize an error made and correct it that much sooner. Aboard his Enterprise, Engineering had also been designed by a human rather than - from the looks of it - a former schoolmate of his that had been a few years ahead of him back on Vulcan.

His Enterprise had also been built more than a decade earlier than this ship that bore it's name...

How had the destruction of the USS Kelvin caused this great change to the ship he had served aboard off and on for almost thirty years?


	2. Climbing Up and Starting The Fall

**Author's note: **I've decided to take a few liberties with the life of Robert April ie. pushing back his date of birth a little bit, adding a daughter to the crew of the Kelvin and expanding his involvement with the creation of the Enterprise. In the novel Final Frontier by Diane Carey, he was involved with the newly created and as yet unnamed Enterprise (which George Kirk named) and appeared to have had something to do with it's development.

Now on with the story...

* * *

Twenty five years before Ambassador Spock's visit to the newly commissioned Enterprise and a universe away, Captain Robau stood aboard his ship supervising the beginning stages of the USS Kelvin's mandatory overhaul. His mind wasn't on the ship as it should have been however, but on his former First Officer Commander Kirk who had requested a transfer to Starbase Security so he could spend more time with his growing family as Starbase personnel served in rotations of several months on and several months off duty rather than being away from home for up to several years as Starship crew did. As he'd thought about the young man who would be leaving him and the Kelvin behind for stabler and safer work, his mind drifted from his regret at letting his best officer go to the regret that he himself had never settled down.

On the planet below, Captain Robert April - a genial Englishman in his early forties with a fondness for cardigan sweaters and a medical condition that allowed him to wear one over his uniform - was currently pushing his pet project through the Starfleet Planning Commission's Starship Design branch while his vessel the USS Tiberius was being refitted at the spacedock in a berth next to that of the newly returned Kelvin. As he waited for his meeting for the Admiral in charge, he snorted as he read the missive that had been sent to him by his friend George who'd started out on his ship to which he'd been assigned as a bright young Ensign before eventually transferring to the Kelvin following a promotion. His dear friend now had a second child, a son who had been saddled with the name James Tiberius.

Whether the boy had been named after George's father, the Tiberius or both remained to be seen

April - who had been friends with Kirk since the brash young security officer had saved his life on an away mission - chuckled to himself as he continued to read the account of the boy's birth. It would seem that Captain Robau had pulled some strings to have Winona brought home from the month-long Agricultural Science Symposium on Coltar IV that she had insisted upon attending despite being almost seven months pregnant at the time aboard the Kelvin rather than by her previously arranged transport. While aboard the Kelvin, Winona had started go into labor a month earlier than expected, but it was stopped by the timely intervention of the medical team who had carefully monitored both her and the baby the entire way back to Earth. It was what had happened a week later however that caused Captain April to laugh. Apparently the instant the Kirks had gotten home, Winona had tripped over one of the pigs that belonged to the Kirk family farm which had somehow gotten loose and ended up in the walkway leading up to the house and went into labor again. There had been no medical team to stop it this time and her child was delivered by a frazzled George Kirk and the emergency response team that arrived rather late in the process in front of the Kirk farmhouse.

Refolding the printout of the letter he'd received from the overjoyed George Kirk who was telling everyone he knew about the birth of his son, he jauntily walked towards yet another planning meeting that would bring his dream Starship - the one he'd referred to as if no other vessel deserved that moniker - one step closer to fruition. After the meeting, he would be having dinner with his little Beatrice, who wasn't so little anymore. Now aged nineteen, the child he had carelessly fathered during a one night stand while he was on shoreleave back during his wild youth had blown through Starfleet Academy and been posted to the Kelvin under his best and dearest friend earlier this year.

Straightening his sweater in order to give himself a moment to prepare for what lay ahead, he followed the receptionist into the conference room knowing full well that he would be walking out with a headache. It and every other headache he would suffer during the struggle with Starfleet's bureaucrats would be worth it to see his Starship sailing across the galaxy in a few short years however...

* * *

Twenty-five years before Ambassador Spock's tour of the Enterprise and many light years away in a universe that had been created when a massive Ship called the Narada had come through an anomaly that had been created in the future of the other universe, the body of a young engineer who would have joined the Constitution Project's design team a year later had he lived floated amongst the debris of the USS Kelvin while a shuttle from the Starfleet Recovery Team approached in its grim task of gathering up the mortal remains of the destroyed ship and the remaining bits of the dead amongst its crew. Only a few bodies or parts of which - those of crewmembers that had been sucked out through breaches in the hull - could be recovered. Those that had died aboard the Kelvin when it had collided with the Narada - including that of Captain Kirk - had been incinerated and were unrecoverable.

Back on Earth, Captain Robert April sat through the memorial service for those who died aboard the USS Kelvin, his eyes red and rimmed with tears. In a matter of minutes he had lost his dearest friend and his cherished daughter Beatrice who had joined Starfleet in order to follow in the footsteps of a father she knew only through letters and the occasional visit. He had received a message that morning shortly before he'd left for the service that some of her remains had been found.

She should have been back yesterday. She should have been back yesterday, and they should have been eating dinner together this evening as they had planned. And George...He and George should have been laughing together over the early birth of his son who most definitely should not have been born aboard one of the Kelvin's shuttlecraft, starfleet regulations notwithstanding.

After the memorial service, April found he had nothing to do as the planning meeting for his Starship had been postponed so everyone could attend the memorial. Though working tended to help him get through things when he was emotionally overwhelmed, he decided to stay away from his office since he couldn't bear to look at the printout of his dream upon which George had scrawled "Good luck with your enterprise". Instead, he went home where he ended up having a date with a bottle and an argument over the Comm with Beatrice's mother Alice over where Beatrice's remains would be buried. He wanted her in Coventry where he and several generations of the April family stretching back to the Eighteenth Century had been born, and she wanted her buried in her family plot in California. After about an hour of bickering back and forth, he ended up angrily suggesting that since there was more than one piece of her they could do both, before he slammed his fist down onto the disconnect button and ended the call.

Following the vicious argument with Beatrice's mother with whom he'd never gotten along, he spent the rest of the night ignoring all incoming calls while steadily getting drunker and drunker. After emptying a couple of bottles in an attempt to switch his blood with alcohol, he ended up passing out around dawn, not caring that he had puked on his carpet during the night or that he was laying in said vomit.

**Edited 2-17-13**


	3. Hello Sarah, Farewell Beatrice

In the world where the Kelvin had come home safe with all hands, Starfleet Captain Robert April was at this moment one thing he rarely ever was, and that was frantic, on the verge of panic even. When his Beatrice had shipped out with the Kelvin at a ridiculously early hour that morning after spending two her weeks of leave while the ship underwent its standard maintenance overhaul, she had entrusted her cat Mitzi into his care because she hadn't wanted the poor creature to go through the stress of being put in stasis again. Said cat was now emptying the contents of its stomach on his carpet no less than ten hours after he had said goodbye to his daughter, and he had absolutely no idea what was wrong with it or if it was fatal or not.

Silently praying that he wouldn't have to face his daughter and inform her that her cat had dropped dead from some mysterious disease less than twenty-four hours after it had entered his care, he raced over to his home console. He was a dog person, and this small four-legged creature that was puking on his carpet was most definitely not a dog, and as such, he didn't quite know how to deal with it.

"Computer, find the closest Emergency Veterinarian." he yelled.

After discovering that one S. Poole D.V.M. was the nearest to his location, he promptly scooped the cat up and placed it in the carrier he had transported it home in praying he hadn't damaged any delicate bones or internal organs as he did so - he was a dog person, a large-breed dog person, and cats had always looked quite fragile to him in comparison - as the creature had struggled with him every step of the way. As he carried the yowling cat out the door carrier and all, he winced at the nasty set of scratches he had gotten on his arms for his efforts and decided that he didn't have time to tend to them as there was clearly something wrong with the hissing, spitting, fury in the animal carrier.

Racing to his seldom used ground transport which usually sat gathering dust in his small garage since he was off-planet so often, he practically threw the cat carrier in the back seat before stopping and securely fastening it in. He then raced for the driver's seat, starting the transport and racing backwards out of the garage in a rather dangerous and highly questionable maneuver that would have had traffic patrol officers raising their eyebrows over the fact that he'd actually pulled it off the instant the door closed.

After surviving his trip out of the garage, he raced from Warwick to Coventry at a speed nearly double the local posted speed limit. Upon reaching Coventry, he sped through the streets, skidding to a stop at the Emergency Veterinary Centre on Daventry road. If his ground-car had had tires like the antique ones did, they would have been smoking and have left a long black mark on the pavement outside the small veterinary clinic. As it was, the vehicle had made a loud and rather startling sound of protest at being handled so roughly when it came to a complete halt.

Once the vehicle came to a complete stop, he jumped out and barely paused to retrieve the carrier containing the now shell shocked feline from the back seat before racing into the clinic. Once inside, he was met by one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. She had wheat blonde hair and green eyes set in an elegant and aristocratic face. Instead of wearing the trappings of royalty - which he was certain wouldn't have looked out of place on her - she was clad in a white laboratory coat with the words Sarah Poole D.V.M. stitched into the pocket in red which had been thrown over a set of standard green surgical scrubs. Taking in his apparent panic as well as his rather harried appearance, the angel that stood before him smiled in a rather comforting manner.

"What seems to be the problem?" she asked.

All he could do at that point was babble incoherently about his daughter's cat, which most definitely didn't convey the sort of first impression that he would want to give a woman like Ms. Poole.

He left an hour later, after learning the cat was fine though rather shaken up by her trip. The vomiting which hadn't been a sign of a fatal disease as he'd feared had apparently been because he had given the cat a bowl of milk, which you shouldn't give to adult cats since it could make them ill. Go figure.

* * *

In the world where the Kelvin had been destroyed by a collision with the Narada that had saved its surviving crew, Robert April sat on the couch not bothering to watch whatever was on the screen that he'd turned on for the noise it created more than anything. Rather than being focused on the talk-show that was playing, his bloodshot blue eyes were focused on something that wasn't there. Instead of seeing his rather dismal and messy surroundings, he was seeing his little Beatrice as she had been when he visited her for the first time. She had been nearly two when her mother Alice had sought him out to request support payments after she'd done a search and discovered that he was making more credits at his job in Starfleet than she was at her job. Seeing her curly brown hair and the wide blue eyes that mirrored his own at that age, he had had absolutely no doubts as to her paternity when he'd first laid eyes on her. As she grew, she had grown to look more and more like him with very little of her mother in her features.

He'd attended her funeral today. Her remains had been given to her mother who had won the argument and buried her in California where he had stood under the hot Bakersfield sun listening to the Baptist minister speak of someone who was most likely a stranger to him. As he listened to the man drone on and on about his daughter not once naming any of her more endearing traits, he thought it strange that this pastor was the one to do the graveside service considering the fact that Beatrice had been baptized Lutheran at the Academy, but swiftly realized that it was her mother's doing. Alice had been notorious for doing whatever she wanted regardless of other people's feelings, and being nonreligious in the extreme, the woman had probably thought one Christian minister was the same as another regardless of the denomination.

As the pastor droned on beneath that too-hot sun that he was broiling under, he couldn't stop thinking that Beatrice probably wouldn't rest in peace without whatever funeral rites the Lutherans deemed necessary. Having been raised by an Atheist father and an Agnostic mother and only setting foot inside a church for a couple weddings and his daughter's baptism, he wasn't entirely certain what these rites might have been and how they would have differed, but he was sure that they were different from what the minister was doing as he didn't belong to the same denomination that his daughter had.

The thought of his daughter being laid to an uneasy rest was an extremely unpleasant one, so naturally it stayed with him.

Taking another swig from the half empty bottle that had been his near-constant companion over the past couple weeks, he came to a decision. After sweeping his hair back so he looked somewhat presentable, he called the minister of the church his daughter had attended in San Francisco unheeding of the hour. Fortunately it was only about Six p.m. in California rather than the two o'clock in the morning it was where he was at, and the minister was still there preparing his Sunday sermon.

He hated the look of pity that was in the minister's eyes as he drunkenly tried to explain what he wanted. He apparently got through to the man though, if his response was any indication. Satisfied that his duty to his daughter was done in this instance, he closed the call completely ignoring the minister's offer to meet for some counseling.

Realizing how late it was and that he hadn't gotten any sleep the night before, he then washed several sleeping pills down with a swig of whiskey. It was the only thing he could do to get to sleep these days.

**Edited 2-17-13**


	4. Lunch and a Starship and Lunch Without

As the U.S.S. Kelvin drifted through space under the watchful eye of Captain Robau, Admiral Archer happily greeted Captain April who'd been a particularly bright and promising cadet that he'd taken a bit of a shine to only a couple short decades before as the man made his way across the Starfleet Academy Grounds. It was a bit early for their meeting, but as he had half a mind to have said meeting over lunch, he was sure that the young captain wouldn't mind all that much. He knew this great Italian place that he was certain that April was sure to like.

Robert April smiled and waved back as old man Archer approached. He should've known that the Admiral would be hanging around here, since it seemed to be one of his most favorite places in the universe. He'd come to the Academy that day to give a guest lecture as a favor to an old classmate of his who'd found his calling behind a teacher's desk rather than amongst the stars. Since he would have been heading to meet with Admiral Archer at Starfleet HQ that day anyways, his friend's request hadn't been all that burdensome as he hadn't really had to go out of his way to do it.

Today was the absolute last day he could meet with Archer about his Starship because he and the Tiberius would be shipping out tomorrow, and he had several things aside from promoting his Constitution Class vessel that he needed to do before then, including taking Beatrice's cat to the vet for a check-up and any vaccinations it might need before he brought it aboard the Tiberius with him. Captains were given a bit more leeway when it came to pet-like creatures than ordinary crew were because if everyone was allowed to bring an animal along, the ship would be rather quickly overrun with cats, small dogs, birds, various rodents, and exotic alien creatures that weren't quite sentient.

He was looking forward to seeing Ms. Poole again tomorrow morning. Hopefully this time he wouldn't make nearly as much of an arse of himself as he had the last time. When he'd come home from the vet's following that little milk incident, there had been several traffic violation citations waiting for him in his inbox. He'd had to show up at court two days ago, and had been sentenced to 150 hours of community service by the rather dour looking judge who'd suspended his sentence until the next time he returned to Earth for leave, since Starfleet wouldn't delay a five-year mission for something that petty.

When he and Admiral Archer met half-way in the middle of the Academy lawn, the Beagle that had been racing around said lawn ran up to join them, dropping a well chewed tennis ball at his feet. He'd always admired Admiral Archer's dogs, they were all such happy and healthy creatures. He was more of a Labrador person himself, but one couldn't help but admire such energetic dogs as Archer's Beagles.

Laughing, he tossed the tennis ball for the animal who was undoubtedly named after a Musketeer to catch.

"So, I was thinking that instead of meeting in my office, there's this great Italian place we could try." the venerable Admiral said, watching as his dog chased after a ball that had been thrown with an energy he no-longer had.

"Sound's great." Captain April replied. He'd already snagged a meal in the Academy cafeteria, but it would be rude to deny an Admiral his lunch, especially the Admiral in whose hands the future of his Starship program was held, the reputedly cranky Admiral who was more than a century old in whose hands the future of his Starship was being held.

An hour later, the two of them were seated at a table with the Beagle Aramis on the floor by Archer's feet. A waiter set a pasta dish whose name he could barely pronounce before each of them and a bowl full of meatballs on the floor for the dog.

"So, tell me about this Starship of yours..." Admiral Archer said as soon as the waiter had walked away.

* * *

In a universe where the Kelvin didn't sail the stars on yet another mission because most of it couldn't be found, Admiral Archer scowled as he dialed Captain April's home comm number. The man was more than an hour late to the appointment he'd set. He'd heard that April had been having problems, but that didn't mean that he could keep him waiting like this. He could've cancelled the appointment at the very least...

The man who answered the comm looked almost nothing like the cheerful young Englishman who'd nearly run into him during his first year at the Academy. This man didn't look to be in any shape to be out of the house much less in San Francisco where he was supposed to be making a pitch for that beloved Constitution class Starship of his that he'd been sketching out and consulting engineers on for the last couple of years, that Starship that the man had spoken of as if none of Starfleet's other vessels deserved the title of such. The bleary eyed drunk who'd answered the comm looked as if he hadn't eaten, slept, or tended to his hygiene in weeks.

"Get some rest April, you look like hell." he said when he'd finally processed the young captain's condition.

Without saying a word, the man hung up on him, and he was left staring at the Starfleet logo that had replaced April's image wondering how the man had gotten that bad so quickly.

In England, a man who didn't even bother kicking himself for forgetting what was supposed to have been an all-important meeting turned his comm off before anyone else could bother him that day. It didn't matter anymore. It all didn't matter anymore. He'd told himself he'd get through it every time he lost someone, but he couldn't just work and work and work until time passed and he forgot Beatrice. You weren't supposed to outlive your child. It wasn't right, it wasn't natural.

His friends had tried to comfort him, tried to get him some counseling or something weeks ago, but he'd shut all of them out. Why couldn't they see that he wanted to be left alone?

The next day after a hasty promotion, the Tiberius left Spacedock without Robert April in the captain's chair where he should have been.


	5. Good Luck With Your Enterprise

While the Kelvin sat in Spacedock being prepared for a complete retrofit and Captain Robau visited the woman his former First Officer was trying to set him up with, Captain Robert April smiled as he read the message that had been waiting for him upon his return after the completion of his most recent five-year mission. While the fact that the Tiberius would be decommissioned soon was saddening, there was reason for him to be joyful aside from his first visit to his daughter's firstborn who'd been born earlier that year, and that reason was that the first sections of his Starship's frame were being constructed in an undisclosed location.

Because his Constitution class ship would be equipped with any and every bit of cutting-edge technology Starfleet could get its hands on including armaments that could cause the Klingons' recent sabre rattling to increase, it had been decided to hide the ship for a while until the project was complete and ready to be launched in order to reduce the temptation for anyone who might choose to sabotage the project. Current estimates placed that launch at roughly five to seven years from now.

Smiling happily, he made his way to his daughter's home in Pasadena, not even bothering to do his usual complaining about how long it took the intercontinental shuttle to get there. Life was too good for complaining just then, his mission had gone well, he had a grandson to meet, and his other baby was no longer just a sketch and a dream as it had been for so long.

Beatrice, her husband, and their wife were all smiles when they greeted him at the door. His grandson Carl hadn't been nearly as happy to meet him however, probably because he'd just interrupted the boy's dinner. The little boy who was only just beginning to sit up on his own eventually warmed up to him over the course of his stay though, probably forgetting their initial introduction as time passed and his grandfather had proved just as willing to dote on him as his parents if not moreso.

The cat Mitzi who'd never warmed up to him despite spending over a year with him until he'd been able to pull enough strings to have it sent to his daughter where it belonged avoided him completely however. The only reason he knew the creature was still alive was the food bowl that had been left out for it. He didn't mind being avoided by the creature though. He'd always been a dog person, and well, after a year of trying, he'd completely given up on teaching a cat how to play fetch.

All too soon, the two day visit that had only been supposed to be an evening was over, and he'd made his way back to his own house in England. His own house where he was completely alone...

After being aboard a ship with a crew of over three-hundred for over five years, he was no-longer used to being alone, and he didn't like it. It was far too quiet for one.

Sighing, he pulled on his boots and sweater and went out and bought a puppy. Two hours later, rather than introducing the creature to his new home as he'd half planned on doing, he found himself bringing it to a certain veterinary clinic for a check-up despite the fact that it had been given a clean bill of health by the pet store veterinarian. He'd been searching for a legitimate reason to visit Dr. Poole with whom he'd traded the occasional letter anyway, and since Mitzi wasn't around...

"You haven't been feeding that dog milk have you?" Sarah said when he brought his new pet in to be examined less than two hours after having had its pre-sale examination.

"Nope, but I just got it so there's still time to do so." he replied with a smile.

Sarah Poole's laugh was as beautiful as the rest of her.

* * *

In a world where a ship called the Tiberius left and returned without Captain April and the Kelvin was five years dead, Admiral Archer hobbled away from a graveside shaking his head at the waste. There was a man who should have been buried amongst the stars, but after he'd crashed and burned he'd ended up in the ground as everything he could have been turned to ash. Robert April had had a great deal of promise, but that was all gone now, gone never to return.

Nobody knew exactly what it would take to destroy a man until it happened. The late Captain April's death spiral had begun with the death of his daughter Beatrice aboard the Kelvin. In the weeks and months following Beatrice's death, the man had pushed everyone who tried to help him away, and there had been nobody to help him pick himself back up again when things became truly dire.

Even in the 23rd century when drug interactions were mostly a thing of the past booze and sleeping pills were a dangerous combination. Under the influence of one, it was easy to become careless and accidentally overdose on the other, and an overdose could be fatal if left untreated no matter what century you were from. Because April had no family and had long since pushed all of his friends away from him, coldly refusing to take their concerned calls until they'd eventually gotten the message and stopped calling, it had taken nearly a week before he'd been found after a concerned neighbor had called someone.

Very few people had shown up to the man's funeral, just a few former friends and shipmates and him. He himself had only come in memory of that bright young cadet who had made him laugh. A bright young cadet who should have been buried amongst the stars after a stellar career.

Two days after departing from the April family plot in Coventry England, he found a box waiting for him on his desk. When he asked why it was there, the response he'd gotten was that since April had no remaining family, they didn't know who to give what possessions didn't get recycled due to their age and/or intrinsic value to, and since he'd attended the funeral...

Sighing, he rooted through the box hoping that something in there would give him an idea as to what he hell he should do with a dead man's belongings since simply dumping them down the recycler like the rest of the man's stuff had been seemed wrong somehow. At the bottom of the box that mostly contained family heirlooms was the 2-d printout of a set of starship blueprints that had been folded into eighths. Unfolding the plans, he could say that he'd never quite seen a ship of its like before, nor had he seen anything like it proposed in recent memory.

On a relatively blank section of the plans, someone who wasn't Robert April had scrawled the words "Good luck with your enterprise".

The word "enterprise" struck a chord within him.

Yes, this could be an Enterprise. A new Enterprise for a new generation of explorers.

Knowing what to do with them at least, he had the plans forwarded to the guys in Starship Design.


	6. Triumph and a Non-Starter

Captan Robert April watched as the last of the colonists from the Rosenberg were offloaded at the starbase the newly named Enterprise had pulled into hours before. As he watched, his fiancee and soon to be Chief Medical Officer Sarah Poole stood by his side. When she'd said yes to everything including travel in space which she'd so despised just the day before, she'd made him the happiest man in the universe.

Somewhere off to the side hovering in the edges of his peripheral vision, George Kirk who would become his Chief of Security and hopefully his First Officer stood watching the same scene with a bit of a smile on his face. Standing to one side of Kirk was the incorrigible Lieutenant Reed. On the other side of him was someone whose existence couldn't officially be acknowledged until his identity as Cale Sandorson became official.

This happy scene almost hadn't happened, because they had almost failed in their mission to rescue the Rosenberg as they had set out to do. One of the main reasons they had succeeded and would now be able to go home to their families was standing next to George looking almost human despite the fact that there were one or two more procedures that needed to be completed. One of which would be getting rid of that slight greenish tinge to his skin that was causing some people to do double-takes when they saw him.

The trouble that had almost destroyed the Enterprise so soon after it had been built hadn't been the ion storm that the Rosenberg had been trapped in a dead spot of which that the Enterprise's new state-of-the-art shields had managed to punch through where the shields of other ships would have buckled and failed, making it the ultimate test in which to put the new vessel through its paces. The problem had been the saboteur on board, the Romulan raised human saboteur who had sent them through the Neutral Zone and into Romulan space.

Had the Enterprise run into anyone other than t'Cael, odds were that it would have been taken as a prize and they as prisoners. By a stroke of good fortune however, they had run into t'Cael, and they had gotten out of the situation with their ship and their hides intact and had been able to rescue the people aboard the Rosenberg who had been losing hope since no other Starfleet vessel had been able to get to where they were stranded in the middle of an ion storm that was about to engulf their vessel.

A triumphant return following an impossible rescue was the best of all ways to introduce the new Enterprise to the galaxy at large.

Trust George to have found the perfect name for the ship he'd been planning on calling the Constitution after the class of vessel he'd pretty much designed. The funny thing was, though the man didn't really remember it since he'd practically forgotten about the day his crazy former captain had come to him raving about a new ship design and waving a set of plans in his face, George had named the ship long before it had been anything but a dream.

"Good luck with your enterprise" was a rather odd choice of words if one stopped to think about it...

* * *

In a small office that was located in a building that was an annex of the massive and sprawling Starfleet Headquarters in a universe where the Enterprise hadn't triumphantly rescued the S.S. Rosenberg which was still stranded because it hadn't been built, an engineer looked over the current drafts of the design that had been submitted to Starship Development five years ago. It still retained the overall character of the original that had been submitted, but one or two things could still go without destroying the integrity of the frankly beautiful design that had been submitted to them.

He was almost loath to make any changes to the plans, as he knew how easily they could snowball and twist the design he so admired. Despite its beauty and the fact that it would look even more beautiful out there in the stars than it did on paper, there was also the sad possibility that by the time Design was through with it only certain parts of the ship would be recognizable as having been even remotely related to the original plans. Engineering had been through three re-designs in as many years already.

One of the things that could be omitted from the final design without destroying it however had to do with the console controls whose plans he was assigned to look over.

Push buttons? Really? Sure there was a reason why virtual monitors and virtual keyboards had rapidly fallen out of style after they were no-longer cutting edge, and a reason for why Vinyl kept coming back every generation or two even though it had been three centuries since it had been rendered obsolete, and that reason wasn't because Vinyl sounded better than modern renderings of the same music.

The truth was that with the technology they had available to them, they could easily design a ship where all the crew had to do was think in the general direction of the computer and it would do whatever the hell they wanted. There was only one problem that kept them from building such a ship however, and that was the crew themselves. Humans - who made up the vast majority of ships' crews in Starfleet - needed to fiddle with things or they got bored. When humans got bored, they tended to become destructive, and hundreds of bored and destructive individuals being packed together in an enclosed space was a recipe for certain disaster.

Equipping the bridge with push buttons, fiddly knobs, and little switches in order to keep the crew occupied would be taking things a bit too far however...

After making one or two suggestions that would be a happy medium between chattering at the computer which could easily separate and process hundreds of overlapping commands and having a bunch of buttons lying around everywhere making the bridge look almost ridiculously old-fashioned, he submitted his section of the plans for the Enterprise project to the committee.

With the way things were going, it could be another decade before a single section of frame was laid in the shipyards. It wasn't so much the minor kinks that needed to be worked out as the fact that they wanted the ship to be as state-of-the-art as possible when it was completed, and new breakthroughs were being made in just about every field every day making the proposed technology they considered equipping the ship with outdated almost the instant they suggested it.

Some Vulcan prodigy had already outstripped Richard Daystrom's computing breakthrough earlier this year, and in doing so, she had made Daystrom's best look slow and obsolete despite the fact that it had only been a few years ago that it was the best thing out there. That little breakthrough had of course meant yet another change to the ship's design as the tech guys wanted the fleet's future flagship to be equipped with the best computer and nothing less...


	7. Passing the Torch

Captain April sighed as he carried the last box of his belongings out of the Captain's quarters that he'd shared with his wife for most of the last nine years. It was the end of an era as it were. The Enterprise had gone from being the first and the only to being one of five and soon to be one of twelve. Not only that, but with the removal of the last of his belongings, it would belong completely to Christopher Pike.

"We've had a good run, haven't we?" he said as he paused in the corridor.

"Yes we have." George Kirk replied from where he was backing out of the First Officer's quarters which needed to be made ready for the ship's new First Officer carrying a box that was larger than the one he carried.

"I was talking to the ship you know." he said, smiling at the man who'd served along his side for nine years that would be taking up a job for a certain mutual friend of theirs so he'd be able to return home to his wife at night, and possibly re-kindle their romance now that his two sons were both grown and out of the house.

"Do you need me to call Dr. Poole?" George asked mock-seriously.

"No, now let's get out of here and go visit Jimmy." he replied with a laugh. "I still don't know how that little delinquent got into the Academy."

"Good genes." George said with a smile as he accompanied him on his trip to the turbolift. "It's not like he was the first Genius-level Juvenile Offender in the Mid-West."

When they reached the Docking Bay, it was only to almost run into Chris Pike who was coming aboard with some of his belongings now that all of the fancy speeches and ceremonies were over and done with and the day to day tasks of getting the ship ready to leave Earth had started.

"I'd hand you the keys to the ship" he said to the younger captain when the obligatory greetings, "I've gotta go"s and farewells were done and the three of them were about to part company "But, I seem to have lost them."

"Did you check under the seat cushion?" the Enterprise's new captain asked.

"Would you mind checking for me?" he replied as he headed towards the shuttle that would take him away from the Enterprise with George Kirk in tow.

It was the end of an era, but he wasn't sad. It wasn't like it was the end of everything, and he had many good long years ahead of him.

* * *

Admiral Archer smiled when the young man arrived. Technically, the young captain hadn't had to obey his summons as he was long since retired, but the young man who couldn't have been more than forty or so had come despite the fact that he was undoubtedly busy since his ship had only just returned to Earth. This show of respect towards him that many young officers were lacking these days was yet another thing he liked about the young captain that he'd been hearing so many good things about.

"Come." Archer said with a smile as he guided his wheelchair past the slightly startled young man who hadn't even been given the chance to ring the doorbell. He was old, and nearing death, and hadn't the time to waste on such things, especially since he and the young man had somewhere they needed to be, and that somewhere related to the last task that he had left to do, a task he was certain would be completed since he still had the ears of the right people in Starfleet.

Eventually, after the rather confused young man had followed him down the walk and to the transport that had taken the both of them to the spaceport, he was carefully strapped into a seat on the shuttle that had been reserved for him and his companion. Rather than leaving Earth as his young companion had seemed to expect, the shuttle flew up and over about half of the North American continent before settling down in the Mid-West.

The young man he'd brought with him seemed somewhat bewildered by their destination, but had continued to follow him without question as he led him out into the shipyards where they had landed.

"It's going to be called the Enterprise, and I'm sure that you'll be pleased to know that you're on the short-list of candidates for its first captain." the retired Admiral who was in his twilight years said, smiling mischievously as he and the young captain who accompanied him stood in the middle of the Riverside shipyards looking up and up and up at what was currently being built.

Like the man who'd originally designed the ship that was currently little more than a frame, the ship that would one day become the namesake of the ship that Archer himself had once been captain of, Christopher Pike had that certain something that made for a great Starfleet captain. Hopefully, his fire wouldn't burn out too soon like Robert April's had. There was a reason he was showing this man the ship after-all.


	8. Epilogue: Departure From Tradition

As Ambassador Spock prepared to leave the bridge of the strange ship that shared a name with the one he'd served aboard under Pike and under Kirk and briefly under Decker and as a Captain in his own right before the captain arrived and found him aboard, he found himself turning back to check for something he technically shouldn't be checking for since he wasn't the captain of the Enterprise.

He didn't know exactly who had started the silly tradition, but he'd first become aware of it when he'd spotted Captain Pike sliding a set of antique keys under the seat cushion of the captain's chair shortly before he'd turned command of the Enterprise over to Jim. He himself had experienced it firsthand when he'd sat down in the captain's chair for the first time as a captain of the Enterprise and felt a lump that had turned out to be a pair of keys. According to what he'd heard from Captain and later Ambassador Picard, the tradition had been continued to the Enterprise-D.

Feeling like he was doing something forbidden, he lifted up the seat cushion.

Proving yet again that his actions had led to the creation of an entirely different timeline, the keys weren't there.


End file.
